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The Thracians were an Indo-European people, inhabitants of Thrace and adjacent lands (present-day Bulgaria, Romania, northeastern Greece, European Turkey and northwestern asiatic Turkey, eastern Serbia and parts of Republic of Macedonia). They spoke the Thracian language.
The Thracians were a numerous people, but they were broken up into a large number of groups and tribes, though a number of powerful Thracian states were organized during some periods, such as the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace and the Dacia of Burebista. In the 5th millennium BC, Thracians occupied the area between northern Greece and southern Russia. By the 5th century BC, the Thracian presence was pervasive enough to have made Herodotus call them the second-most numerous people in the known world, and potentially the most powerful, if not for their disunity.
The Iliad records that the Thracians from around the Hellespont and also the Thracian Cicones fought on the side of the Trojans (Il. II). Many mythical figures, such as the god Dionysus, princess Europe and the hero Orpheus were borrowed by the Greeks from their Thracian neighbours.
Josephus claims the founder of the Thracians was the biblical character Tiras, son of Japheth. "Thiras also called those whom he ruled over Thirasians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians." AotJ I:6.
Most of the Thracians would eventually become Hellenized (in the province of Thrace) or Romanized (in Moesia, Dacia, etc.). Small groups of Thracian speakers however may still have been in existence when the Slavs arrived in the Balkans in the 6th Century AD, and theoretically some Thracians may have become Slavicized. Scholars have even proposed that the present-day Albanians may be Thracians who maintained their language, but this is controversial.
In the first years of 21st c., Bulgarian archaeologists made amazing discoveries in Central Bulgaria which were summarized as The Valley of the Thracian Kings.
Thracian tribes
These next tribes are not certainly Thracian:
Famous Thracians
- Decebalus, a great king of Dacia, ultimately defeated by the forces of Trajan.
- Orpheus, in Greek legend, was the chief representative of the art of song and playing the lyre, and of great importance in the religious history of Greece and Bulgaria.
- Spartacus was a Thracian enslaved by the Romans, who led a large slave uprising in what is now Italy in (73 - 71 B.C.). His army of escaped gladiators and slaves defeated several Roman legions in what is known as the Third Servile War.
Reference
Hoddinott, Ralph F., The Thracians, 1981.
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